Authors:Eileen R. Campbell-ReedFirst page: 167Abstract: Source: Volume 4, Issue 2, pp 167 - 198In 2014 women constituted 15.8% of U.S. clergy. They led 10% of U.S. congregations. While the numbers have increased dramatically in fifty years, this data invites a deeper question. What does women’s entry into ministry (lay and ordained) mean for ecclesiology, the life and doctrines of the church' Four case studies from two qualitative investigations of ministry illustrate women’s pastoral leadership from the margins of Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist churches, showing how women called to ministry are: living testaments to a renewed vision for church that embraces the fullness of humanity; living judgments on harms and shortcomings of the church; embodied revisions to ecclesial practices. Each case study bears witness to situated possibility of the Spirit’s work; exposes and challenges sins of sexism; shows every day dilemmas over resisting and subverting power; and reframes doctrine and practice from the margins, renewing ecclesial vision for the church.PubDate: 2017-12-07T00:00:00Z

Authors:Paul S. FiddesFirst page: 199Abstract: Source: Volume 4, Issue 2, pp 199 - 217‘Seeing More Clearly with the Eyes of Love’, a new ‘Liturgy for Voices’ based on Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is an experimental piece of intertextuality. It interleaves extensive quotations from the play with elements of the western Christian liturgy and five new poems by contemporary poets. The paper argues that the sequence of the liturgy has parallels with four moments in a Shakespearean comedy: gathering, disturbance, reconciliation and dismissal. Further, in this particular play two quotations from the New Testament appear at climactic points, and these are marked in the liturgy by two symbolic actions which give opportunity for congregational engagement. Data relating to congregational response has been collected after three productions of the liturgy, and is analysed to discover the effect of integrating theatrical and liturgical drama on the theme of love, so contributing to a larger project on love of God and neighbour as a common ground for religions.PubDate: 2017-12-07T00:00:00Z

Authors:Christian A.B. ScharenFirst page: 218Abstract: Source: Volume 4, Issue 2, pp 218 - 236In The Weight of the World, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes his work as a spiritual exercise. Not known for his religious convictions, his admission is worthy of exploration. In this paper, I build on the conclusion of my book, ‘Fieldwork in Theology’, by drawing on my own interviews with clergy in spaces of social marginality in the USA as a means for evaluating Bourdieu’s claims. I draw upon theologian Kathryn Tanner to claim how God might be present in and through such spiritual exercise. Exactly because of the work entailed to give up oneself for another, and to critically engage in learning about the other, even across multiple divides, this work acts simultaneously as spiritual exercise and social protest against the divisions – racial, economic, religious, and so on – which so often are the source of harm today. Such theological engagement with research method offers a new direction for theological researchers.PubDate: 2017-12-07T00:00:00Z

Authors:Kristopher Norris; Sam SpeersFirst page: 237Abstract: Source: Volume 4, Issue 2, pp 237 - 255This article analyzes the ways multiple formative narratives interact to shape the identity and political practices of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, home of Martin Luther King. We argue that the two key narratives of gospel story in scripture and the church’s particular civil rights legacy form the identity and practice of this community in complicated ways: sometimes they are synthesized, sometimes one narrative is temporally merged into the other, and sometimes they operate as competing narratives, generating a tension. We offer three anecdotes from our original research that illustrate the relationship between these narratives and demonstrate that Ebenezer is a community whose identity and political practices are formed by the overlap and interplay of multiple narratives.PubDate: 2017-12-07T00:00:00Z